In the last blog we were mostly concerned with the idea of when losing the sky may visually enhance the concept or process you want to illustrate. I want to build on those compositional and framing ideas we began to address in the photo of the wildflowers in a burn zone, and explore the importance of lens decisions. This can be especially significant when a photo is more driven by process rather than merely describing a place. Key to this discussion will be the idea of how space is managed, and when wide angle or telephoto lenses may be more appropriate for emphasizing the idea you are trying to explore. Specific to this blog, we will concentrate on telephoto lenses.
The photo above, DESCENDING THE JAWBONE RIDGE, is from a project I have been working on west of Yosemite since October 2013. The area was devastated by a massive forest fire the previous summer, and since the area was reopened to the public that autumn, I have returned to the area every few months to track the recovery from this disaster. The fire consumed the Tuolomne River canyon all the way up to Hetch Hetchy Reservoir which is where the San Francisco water supply originates. The fire was so massive the only accurate photo one could take to scientifically describe the complete burn zone would be a satellite image from outer space.
Accordingly, my goal was to imply the breadth of the disaster in the above photo by visually sampling an area smaller than the actual 34 mile width of the fire, but really emphasize the barren, naked , ghost like slopes the fire created . The actual dimensions of what are seen in the photo are approximately 40 square miles. To this end, I decided upon using a macrophotography approach to the landscape with the two planes of the image, the foreground and background, being razor sharp with the spatial relationship between these two planes compressed to further emphasize how steep, and rugged the Sierra Nevada foothills are in this area. I also wanted a closed in oppressive feeling for the image, so from the outset decided a sky would run counter to this concept.
Initially , I was working with my shorter macro lens, but while it gave me the sharpness overall I desired, the size of the scorched trees in the far ridge felt too far away and toy like, and the ruggedness of the country was left somewhat understated. My goal was for the viewer to really be visually confronted by this landscape and what had taken place there just a few short months ago.
Accordingly, I decided to switch to my 135mm telephoto lens, knowing it would make the far ridge read as physically closer to the foreground road creating a sense of a very steep foreboding canyon, but also the trees and boulders on that hillside would read as larger than with the shorter macro lens. Critical to the outcome here was also shooting the photo at f32, as telephoto lenses can quickly lose sharpness from f16 down, especially when you are shooting an 8 mile deep environment. The sense of dread could only be created here by losing the sky and having the background aggressively almost loom over the foreground. Compressing the space between the planes in the photo could only be attained by using a longer lens to make the planes feel physically closer than they actually are.